MTA Reports Delays on No. 7 Train Extension

Mayor Michael Bloomberg steps from the 7 subway train into a news conference on the platform to discuss the extension of the line on Dec. 20, 2013.

AP

The extension of the No. 7 subway line to Manhattan’s far West Side was once expected to be completed before the official who funded it, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, left office.

Now the Metropolitan Transportation Authority doesn’t expect the trains to begin running until deep into the new mayor’s first year in office.

MTA officials will brief the authority’s board of directors Monday on the progress of the $2.4 billion project. It is the only MTA “megaproject” funded by the city in the expectation that development of a new neighborhood above West Side rail yards will trigger a flood of new tax revenue.

But while Mr. Bloomberg rode a “dignitary train” for the news media a few days before leaving office last year, bringing 7 trains west from Times Square, through the new tunnels to 34th Street and 11th Avenue, will have to wait until the new terminal station’s huge escalators are working.

MTA officials first raised warning signs in November, when Michael Horodniceanu, the president of the Capital Construction division, said that two huge lifts had failed their initial factory tests and would have to be tested on-site. One of those is a long escalator for the 80-foot-deep 34th Street station, adjacent to the Hudson Yards development site. The other is an incline elevator, the first of its kind in the U.S.

The devices would have to be tested at the site of the new station, Mr. Horodniceanu told the board in November, adding “If it doesn’t work, they’ll have to take it out.”

In materials prepared for Monday’s meetings of the MTA’s board committees, the capital construction staff pushed off the launch of passenger service on the extension from June to “late summer/early fall.”

In addition to the testing delay on the escalators and elevator, the MTA reported a delay in the testing and expected delivery of the “transmission backbone system” for the station, which will affect the major systems of the new station, including the escalators and elevators, fire and ventilation systems, the reports said.

The MTA’s independent engineer said that revenue service was likely to begin in the fourth quarter of 2014.

The No. 7 extension isn’t the only major MTA project facing delays. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that East Side Access, the project intended to bring Long Island Rail Road trains to a new subterranean station north of Grand Central Terminal, will be even further over-budget and behind schedule than previously believed.

MTA officials said they expect the project’s total cost could reach as high as $10 billion, and that its completion could stretch from the previous end date of 2019 to 2021, or beyond.